aluable assistant. The terms of his employment were
of the first importance in the case. Mr. Litchfield of New York was
the patron of the observatory; he had given the trustees of Hamilton
College a capital for its support, which sufficed to pay the small
salary of the director and some current expenses, and he also, when
the latter needed an assistant, made provision for his employment.
It appears that, in the case of Borst, Peters frequently paid his
salary for considerable periods at a time, which sums were afterward
reimbursed to him by Mr. Litchfield.

I shall endeavor to state the most essential facts involved as they
appear from a combination of the sometimes widely different claims
of the two parties, with the hope of showing fairly what they were,
but without expecting to satisfy a partisan of either side. Where an
important difference of statement is irreconcilable, I shall point
it out.

In his observations of asteroids Peters was continually obliged to
search through the pages of astronomical literature to find whether
the stars he was using in observation had ever been catalogued.
He long thought that it would be a good piece of work to search
all the astronomical journals and miscellaneous collections of
observations with a view of making a complete catalogue of the
positions of the thousands of stars which they contained, and
publishing it in a single volume for the use of astronomers situated
as he was. The work of doing this was little more than one of routine
search and calculation, which any well-trained youth could take up;
but it was naturally quite without the power of Peters to carry it
through with his own hand. He had employed at least one former
assistant on the work, Professor John G. Porter, but very little
progress was made. Now, however, he had a man with the persistence
and working capacity necessary to carry out the plan.

There was an irreconcilable difference between the two parties as
to the terms on which Borst went to work. According to the latter,
Peters suggested to him the credit which a young man would gain as
one of the motives for taking up the job. But plaintiff denied
that he had done anything more than order him to do it. He did
not, however, make it clear why an assistant at the Litchfield
Observatory should be officially ordered to do a piece of work for
the use of astronomy generally, and having no special connection
with the Litchfield Observatory.

Howeve